The Tech Blog of Dan Usherhttps://danusher.com
If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research.
Wed, 02 Jan 2019 02:54:00 +0000 en
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1 http://wordpress.com/https://s0.wp.com/i/buttonw-com.pngThe Tech Blog of Dan Usherhttps://danusher.com
SharePoint Server 2019https://danusher.com/2018/10/27/sharepoint-server-2019/
https://danusher.com/2018/10/27/sharepoint-server-2019/#respondSun, 28 Oct 2018 01:02:50 +0000http://danusher.com/?p=1680Read more SharePoint Server 2019]]>Just upgrade to SharePoint 2013? That means you probably know the ins and outs of your information architecture and just transitioned all of your apps over to either Provider Hosted or SharePoint Hosted apps… what better time than to start thinking about setting up new kit to install SharePoint Server 2019?

Go ahead, click the download link. Give it a whirl on your Azure subscription to try it out and get your modern on.

]]>https://danusher.com/2018/10/27/sharepoint-server-2019/feed/0danusherOffice 365 Home Device Limits…https://danusher.com/2018/08/30/office-365-home-device-limits/
https://danusher.com/2018/08/30/office-365-home-device-limits/#respondFri, 31 Aug 2018 01:10:59 +0000http://danusher.com/?p=1678Read more Office 365 Home Device Limits…]]>In case you missed it, Jared Spataro recently announced that the Office 365 Home and Personal subscriptions will no longer have install limits on devices as of October 2, 2018. A caveat to this is that you can only be logged into five devices at a time. In the past it was 10 devices in total (across five users for the home plan, or two installs for the personal account).

Additionally, Office 365 Home is upping the number of seats from 5 to 6. While that may seem pretty insignificant, that’s an additional license to software essentially as well as the services that come along with it and a terabyte of storage on OneDrive.

More about this can be read yonder on the Microsoft Technical Community here:

]]>https://danusher.com/2018/08/30/office-365-home-device-limits/feed/0danusherQNAP Friends… Update your firmware…https://danusher.com/2018/05/26/qnap-friends-update-your-firmware/
https://danusher.com/2018/05/26/qnap-friends-update-your-firmware/#respondSat, 26 May 2018 15:17:51 +0000http://danusher.com/?p=1675Read more QNAP Friends… Update your firmware…]]>Unless you’re running your servers, devices and other items that connect to a network of some sort in a pile of concrete at the bottom of a lake (perhaps a Great Lake) disconnected from the world, it may be time to go and start checking your firmware. I know that it’s one of the most fun activities to do over a Memorial Day weekend – right?

In this case I noticed a post about something called VPNFilter over on Ars Technica – sounds nasty right? It makes mention of what software systems and devices are affected – in a particular set of QNAP devices as well as the software platform that operates QNAP devices, QTS.

For me, I quickly checked my firmware and noticed that I was not in the impacted group, but that’s not to say that you shouldn’t check your QNAP device if you’ve got one. Obviously check to make certain that you’ve got a backup of your QNAP sitting somewhere that you’re able to roll back to if you need to (I’ve never had a problem with their firmware personally).

]]>https://danusher.com/2018/05/26/qnap-friends-update-your-firmware/feed/0danusherAzure: Public Preview of Serial Consolehttps://danusher.com/2018/03/26/azure-public-preview-of-serial-console/
https://danusher.com/2018/03/26/azure-public-preview-of-serial-console/#respondTue, 27 Mar 2018 02:32:08 +0000http://danusher.com/?p=1654Read more Azure: Public Preview of Serial Console]]>I have to say that this is crazy that Microsoft Azure now supports a Serial Console for Virtual Machines (at least in Public Preview). Check out the blog entry over here – https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/azure-serial-console/

I decided to give it a little try to see more and it works like a champ. Very cool to see this capability coming to light as it’s been something that I know I’ve been looking for some time to have available when a VM wasn’t coming back up slower than I would have assumed it would. Well done folks!

]]>https://danusher.com/2018/03/26/azure-public-preview-of-serial-console/feed/0danusherDon’t lose your identity in the Cloud…https://danusher.com/2018/03/24/dont-lose-your-identity-in-the-cloud/
https://danusher.com/2018/03/24/dont-lose-your-identity-in-the-cloud/#respondSun, 25 Mar 2018 03:41:36 +0000http://danusher.com/?p=1643Read more Don’t lose your identity in the Cloud…]]>If you happen to log into your Office 365 Admin Portal on a regular basis good on you – though perhaps you can get most of your alerts through the Office 365 Admin app on your phone. If you do happen to log in though and you’re using Directory Synchronization by way of either Azure AD Connect or Microsoft Identity Manager, you hopefully don’t stumble upon a message like this on the Home page.

If you do though, don’t worry, it’s not just a red highlighted bit of text, but it’s a link to your Directory Synchronization status (not DirSync is no longer around… AAD Connect is the way to go these days). What does it mean to your end users if Directory Synchronization is failing? Well, any change that they happen to make to their profile within your on-premises Active Directory won’t be synchronized with Azure Active Directory until the issue is resolved. Not a big deal – right? Well, just think if you changed your password on-premises, you’ll still be using your old password through Office 365.

If you happen to click the error message though you’ll come to a page with this displayed, you’ll note that you see something like this:

If you’re not familiar with the above, it’s the Sync Status Health page. Typically if things are working good then you’ll see the last time that you sync’d successfully in addition to other pertinent information about your Office 365 tenant’s synchronization status as well as a less stormy picture of the cloud.

In this case, it just happens to be that I turned off the server that the Azure AD Connect tool was running on. Turning the server back and on and the error messages go away and identity changes begin to synchronize once more – life is good.

]]>https://danusher.com/2018/03/24/dont-lose-your-identity-in-the-cloud/feed/0Screenshot 2018-03-24 23.28.11danusherScreenshot 2018-03-24 23.31.07How do I remove my domain name from Office 365?https://danusher.com/2018/03/11/how-do-i-remove-my-domain-name-from-office-365/
https://danusher.com/2018/03/11/how-do-i-remove-my-domain-name-from-office-365/#respondSun, 11 Mar 2018 04:02:16 +0000http://danusher.com/?p=1647Read more How do I remove my domain name from Office 365?]]>So you have a proof of concept Office 365 instance and you realize that you want to take things to Production, but you also realize that you want to keep your POC tenant up and oeprational. Caveat, you went through and applied your Domain Name to your tenant thorugh another registrar. How do you get your domain back?

The gist of the script was running get-msoluser and feeding that to an array. From there looping through and modifying the UserPrincipalName’s domain name. Required a little more work than expected but in the end, worked quite nicely.

If you’ve only got a few users, probably easy enough to make this change through the Office 365 Admin UI. If you’ve got more than a few, PowerShell is your friend – working with arrays and foreach clauses to filter out the users you need to update to the “onmicrosoft.com” domain or another domain you’ve established and working.

After you get below a certain number of users (unknown what that is) with the non-offending domain remaining in the UPN, you can delete the domain from the tenant.

From there you can change your DNS settings back within your DNS registrar to continue making use of the domain or setting it up on your new Office 365 tenant that you’re actually switching over to use for production.

Nevertheless, be sure to try this all out in a test tenant and be mindful that if you’ve got a provider hosted app that’s looking for a specific domain name associated with a user and it’s changed, the user’s access may also have been changed with it. This is similar to if you have an on-premises application and you modify the user’s User Principal Name on-premises – applications that used to rely on that begin to break.

Bottom line – TEST! TEST! TEST!

After you’ve worked out the kinks, you should be good to go! Best of luck!

]]>https://danusher.com/2018/03/11/how-do-i-remove-my-domain-name-from-office-365/feed/0danusherScreenshot 2018-03-25 21.32.07.pngScreenshot 2018-03-25 21.34.44.pngScreenshot 2018-03-25 22.57.27Are you blocking Office 365?https://danusher.com/2018/03/03/are-you-blocking-office-365/
https://danusher.com/2018/03/03/are-you-blocking-office-365/#respondSun, 04 Mar 2018 03:43:39 +0000http://danusher.com/?p=1667Read more Are you blocking Office 365?]]>One of the funnier things that I run into every so often is when someone’s Office 365 implementation isn’t working because their firewall administrator is following the age-old practice of least permission. Definitely, a good way to keep your environment secure, and I wouldn’t tell you not to go down this path… but you probably want to tell your firewall admin to open up the IPs and URLs that are needed for your end users to make use of Office 365 appropriately.

]]>https://danusher.com/2018/03/03/are-you-blocking-office-365/feed/0danusherAzure: Setting up a custom domain for Office 365 by way of Azure Active Directoryhttps://danusher.com/2018/02/26/azure-setting-up-a-custom-domain-for-office-365-by-way-of-azure-active-directory/
https://danusher.com/2018/02/26/azure-setting-up-a-custom-domain-for-office-365-by-way-of-azure-active-directory/#respondTue, 27 Feb 2018 03:58:57 +0000http://danusher.com/?p=1656Read more Azure: Setting up a custom domain for Office 365 by way of Azure Active Directory]]>If you’re like me, sometimes you like to do things a little more efficiently and elegantly through PowerShell or through the Azure portal when it deals with the underlying infrastructure that’s associated with an Office 365 tenant. If you’re using Office 365 you’ve established a tenant with a .onmicrosoft.com name. Reminder PSA: You can’t change your tenant name after you’ve created it – at least not right now. But you can mask it using custom DNS names.

If you’re a little leery of Azure, then perhaps this will help to peel back the onion and bring tears of happiness to your face.

Step 0 – realize what you’re doing and also that you probably want to make certain that you have permission to use the domain name that you’re setting up on the Office 365 / Azure instance that you’re going to perform these configuration changes on. Note that if you’re using a domain name already for something else that it might be wise to create a subdomain to tinker with rather than making “adjustments” to the main domain that you’ve got (e.g. something.danusher.com rather than danusher.com).

Step 2 – Expand “Azure Active Directory” from the left most blade and then select “Custom domain names” from the blade that appears. This will list out the default tenant name that you have with your Office 365 tenant that was built out with your tenant when it was provisioned.

Step 4 – Wait a while. Or as Spence would say while provisioning your User Profile Application, get a cuppa coffee. DNS sometimes can take a while to provision.

Sadly there are no exciting fireworks through the Azure Portal when you verify ownership of a domain.

Just a quick toast that briefly appears in the upper right hand corner of the Azure Portal.

Step 5 – Determine whether you just want to setup Azure AD Connect to get started with Directory and Password Synchronization, or go back to the Office 365 portal and setup the remaining DNS entries to be able to fully recognize the capabilities of Office 365. Nevertheless, you’ll see this screen within Azure upon completion of domain verification.

Back in the Office 365 Admin Center however, you’ll notice that the domain says that it’s still being setup.

Step 6 – Complete the setup of the domain by clicking on the line item associated with the domain name that has been verified by Microsoft Azure.

If I point my name servers from this domain through my registrar to be managed by Microsoft’s name servers, a lot of things just go away as Microsoft manages the domain for me at that point. If I however want to perform these configurations on my own as I have a complex DNS environment, I can do so by adding the values similar to these (fairly standard where you simply replace “potatoe-cloud” with your DNS name)word:

After you’ve updated your DNS within your registrar, you’ll see something like this if you happen to have an incorrect record…

In my case I accidentally had an extra character in there – simple cut and paste error.

After making my corrections and verifying settings I received a nice note that all was configured and ready to go.

From there, any new user I create within Office 365 will make use of the @potatoe.cloud domain name rather than the Tenant name.

Congrats on having your Office 365 email accounts now masked as well as user login’s. I’d recommend learning how to setup and use Azure AD Connect so that you’re able to move forward with having your domain identities provisioned with Office 365 / Azure Active Directory to enhance your end user’s experience.

Remember – DNS isn’t that difficult. But it’s easy to mess up and also then make things more difficult.

]]>https://danusher.com/2018/02/26/azure-setting-up-a-custom-domain-for-office-365-by-way-of-azure-active-directory/feed/0danusherScreenshot 2018-03-27 21.52.54.pngScreenshot 2018-03-27 21.57.20.pngScreenshot 2018-03-27 21.58.58.pngScreenshot 2018-03-27 22.31.19.pngScreenshot 2018-03-27 22.14.05.pngScreenshot 2018-03-27 22.34.09.pngscreenshot-2018-03-27-22-35-13.pngScreenshot 2018-03-27 22.48.11.pngScreenshot 2018-03-27 22.54.53.pngSecurity and Compliance with Office 365https://danusher.com/2018/02/24/security-and-compliance-with-office-365/
https://danusher.com/2018/02/24/security-and-compliance-with-office-365/#commentsSat, 24 Feb 2018 15:50:42 +0000http://danusher.com/?p=1669Read more Security and Compliance with Office 365]]>If you’ve signed up for Office 365 and kicking the tires? Consider checking some of the capabilities that you get with the Security and Compliance Portal within Office 365. How do you get there? If you head over to https://protection.office.com you’ll be prompted to log in with your Work ID. Once you’re in you’ll be able to configure components of your tenant for data loss prevention in addition to many additional capabilities.

For a quick overview of capabilities, head on over to the overview available here:

]]>https://danusher.com/2018/02/24/security-and-compliance-with-office-365/feed/1danusherOffice 365: Managing your users through PowerShellhttps://danusher.com/2018/02/10/office-365-managing-your-users-through-powershell/
https://danusher.com/2018/02/10/office-365-managing-your-users-through-powershell/#respondSat, 10 Feb 2018 15:28:15 +0000http://danusher.com/?p=1671Read more Office 365: Managing your users through PowerShell]]>If you’re like me, then you tend to find yourself wanting to automate as much as possible, or at least be able to work with sets of data in a way that quickly allows you to get to the root of an issue rather than clicking through endless screens of information.

In case you were curious, Office 365 makes use of Azure Active Directory behind the scenes for user managment. As Azure Active Directory is an enterprise resource for identity management for cloud hosted applications, Microsoft has gone to great length to create several interfaces to it. Granted, I could just use a REST call through the Microsoft Graph API to create or delete a user through a POST command, but I can also use PowerShell from a Windows based device.

For user management, our first step is to download the appropriate PowerShell Module. This can be done simply by installing the module through PowerShell running

install-module -name azuread

This will install the PowerShell module specifically for Azure AD and allow you to manage your users. From there before you can make any changes to your user base you’ll need to authenticate. An easy way to do this is as follows: